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EVENT: Portrait exhibit of 1921 Tulsa Race Riot at Tulsa Community College
DATE: Through March 13

Otis Granville Clark, centenarian, recalls being caught in the middle of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. He recalls how armed white mobsters took positions in the upper floor of the Ray Rhee Flour Mill on Archer Street and shot African-Americans in the streets below like snipers. He recalls being separated from his stepfather, a strong family man, during the riot and never seeing him again or discovering where he might be buried.

Clark was able to get past those events through his religious beliefs and by moving to California, where he was a butler for several motion picture stars and where "he got to be with folks who like being happy all the time."

Clark and others recalled those events of more than 80 years ago during a recent reception honoring the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race War and the opening of an exhibit of 39 of their black and white portraits at the Northeast Campus, Tulsa Community College (TCC).

The exhibit, part of the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation Gallery of Distinguished Citizens, will be displayed at the three remaining TCC campuses from now through March 13, 2004.

Racial tension in Tulsa in 1921 reached a flashpoint on May 30 following the arrest of Dick Rowland, an African-American male, and the exaggerated accounts of his physical contact with Sarah Page, a white female elevator operator, in the Drexel Building elevator.

Following a confrontation between white and African-American armed mobs outside the courthouse in which Rowland was held, white rioters looted and burned North Tulsa and the Greenwood Avenue Business District. Historians believe that as many as 300 people died in the riot.

The portrait exhibit is among a series of interesting and compelling photo and art exhibits shown at TCC during the last few years, including displays about the Grand Ole Opry, 1940 Jazz Age in Paris, Native American sculpture, Southern Appalachian women, and Vietnam.